I'm not seeing an in forum search feature and Google didn't come up with any hits so I'll see if there is any interest in this in a new thread.

I like cool looking factory complexes and have worked out a pretty sweet Space Weed/Fuel complex that I wanted to share. This thread would be a great place to collectively share plans for complexes. Note, I have not built this one yet. It is in the sector you revived from A New Home. After seeing how this one turned out, at least on paper, I'm also going to try a mega weed/fuel complex in LooMankStat's Legacy including a robust defense system using the same general plan.

Lokio042, interesting. No one's ever proposed this one before. I didn't realize that there are so many Silicon asteroids in Loom. Question: Why Large Solars? I believe XL Solars are more efficient.

You've certainly located near a good source of customers!

There's a couple big problems. There's navigation markers near or in major traffic lanes. If you ever enter this sector you'll probably get collisions between your traders and these. Perhaps you'll lose customers too, before they buy.

Your LTs will kill a lot of pirates, even blue pirates, and lower your pirate rating to the pits. If your station survives, they'll kill your traders in other parts of the TC universe. I'd expect this sector will spawn pirates in a steady stream. And if they're red and have target right there ...

I didn't realize that there are so many Silicon asteroids in Loom. Question: Why Large Solars? I believe XL Solars are more efficient.

L and XL differ in two ways:
1. Two L take more space in sector than one XL and more building effort.
2. Price of two L + one CCK vs price of one XL.

The throughput should be the same 2*L vs 1*XL. I would use XL. (Perhaps the decision was based on how the complex will look ... in a completely dark sector?)

Collision is not a huge problem. Light is. There is none. The sunlight value of Loom is 0. The only sector like that.

Who cares? The cycle time of Mines and SPP depends on yield and sunlight, respectively. Less light, longer cycles. One needs more SPP's in Loom in order to reach the same per hour production rate than in other sectors.

@Loki: Did you include that detail in your calculations?

_________________Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

LOL, I didn't even notice the 0% light. According to Xadrian calculator it works out. Probably why there are 19 SPP's with only 15 Crystal Fabs. Usually that is a 1:1+1 SPP L to Crystal L ratio. I might change that to XL though. Might work out better in the circle with less SPP's. The reason I went with L's to began with is because of their shape. With 3 panels you can rotate them so the single panel side points to the center of the circle. The alternative is 9XL's and 1L. I started using SPP L's because of how they mesh together in a grid. Rotating every other one 180° allows you to put them very close together utilizing space better than the XL's that can't be overlapped in the same way leaving more dead space between panels.

Bill, I have come to the conclusion that once a complex is up and running it's best to stay out of that sector for the most part. I have seen TS's flat out run into a single station in a mostly empty sector that I was in. Besides these complexes require zero fleet support. The universe provides plenty of traffic to move final product so as long as a weed/fuel facility is a closed loop it just makes money with no ships at all. Inventory stays at zero so I don't even care if NPC ships get blowed up occasionally. Serves them right, shouldn't be smuggling illegal goods anyway.

Oh yea, pirates. I'm not on real good terms with them as it is. Fighting rank assassin from mainly killing pirates. Nothing is going to make my rep any worse in their eyes.

I chose that sector because it won't be easy. I'm assuming there will be constant attacks (hence the 40+ Lasertowers). In addition to the lasertowers I'm going to assign a couple Cerberuses and a Titan or two to protect the complex.

That said, maybe I'll try the design out in another sector first. Mainly so I can see/show what it looks like. Can't really have too many money making complex's now can we? They also double as gas stations to refuel the fleet. All my complexes produce slightly more energy than they use. Makes keeping a large fleet topped off with JJ fuel easy. Just fly to the closest complex, there will be plenty of free fuel.

This time SPP L's might be the best way to go. If it was just the 10 SPP's running all the time you could use just 5 XL's but sense this complex will be serving double duty I need to be able to back the SPP count to 5 and there is no way to turn on 1/2 of an XL. If you are building this without the chip plants then you can sub in 5 SPP XL's and remove the chip tear from the complex.

I'm assuming the grid in sector maps has about a 4k spacing. Hence why everything is based on multiples of 4. Flower Farms and their Sun Oil companions I generally place 1/2 grid apart so they connect nicely. With only one node on the Farms and 3 on the Sun Oil, connecting Sun Oil first then connecting the near by Farm should create a nice dead end at each Farm. In theory at least. My big complex ignored the one node fact and connected the Farms to each other.

Last edited by LOKioO42 on Fri, 13. Oct 17, 16:23; edited 2 times in total

Rainer
I like my factories to be self sufficient. Having ships deliver goods invites attacks on the supply chain. Especially in a hostile sector with tones of pirates that have no doubt lost good friends to the guns on my ship. Once complete I don't want to have to deal with these money makers anymore. Except of course to move credits to my account. That and my ship list is long enough without extra ships supplying something I could just build a factory to supply. I am curious as to how SPP's are going to work with 0% sun. Calculator says it will work so we will have to see.

Update

I started the UK 7:16 complex and realized I'm not thinking about the order of connecting mines right. You have to drag two mines in place that are right next to each other so you can connect them with a construction kit. Then put the hub at the center. For me my ship distance from the center was around the 11k mark. That puts the mine around 12k from center, making a 24k circle. The more mines in the circle the wider the circle can be.

To keep everything lined up I put an Advanced Sat. below the ecliptic plane but lined up exactly where I want the center. Then I flew up from their dropping a nav. sat. above the ecliptic plane where the hub is going to be, then one every 18k for each tear. I'll pick them back up before placing each temp hub.

I'll get some screen shots as I go. Only got two rocks in place last night.

I do not have a "real Complex", just 1*Wheat L + 1*Distillery L connected. In X3AP Loomanck. Practically no attacks at all.

Then again, I'm friendly with Pirates. Do missions for them and buy their big guns. Only rarely I defend a Goner station elsewhere, but I board all large Pirate vessels while doing so, which should lead to lesser reputation penalty than plain kills.

[edit]
You are not the first with "aesthetic complexes". X3R era had many builders with such inclination.

Some German players went for "compact complex" on early X3R. Stations as close to each other as possible, leaving essentially no "cavities" inside the Complex. Like Tetris?

There were "sector complex" builders too; self-sufficient closed loops that used 100% of minerals resources (Asteroid production potential) in the sector. "Pretty" was not the operative word.

_________________Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

There were "sector complex" builders too; self-sufficient closed loops that used 100% of minerals resources (Asteroid production potential) in the sector. "Pretty" was not the operative word.

That would be me for my weapons complexes. At least getting near 100% of mineral resources part. Anything below say 10 isn't worth it. Those smaller ones are best broken up and remote mined. I still do the layered approach though. That's where I came up with the current design. I built a huge complex in Mines of Fortune with just about every rock in the sector dragged way up to the top of the map making a huge grid. SPP and Crystals where also way up next to the mines. With all the heavy stuff on the GPU way up at the top the computer isn't trying render the most taxing stuff when you are flying around near the ecliptic plane. If you fly up to the top, frame rate drops to 8 bit quality. That got me thinking that if a complex is spaced out enough then the normal lag of large complexes can be limited. At least the GPU side of so many factories in a sector.

I think I can do "sector complex" AND pretty at the same time. Asteroid Belt will be that complex, once I can buy Terran stations that is. I started a drawing of that one too but it's far from finished. I'll post it when I do get it done.

I have a question. How big is too big? After scanning Terran Unknown Sector 1, I got to thinking this would be a great sector for a sector complex. This one will make every expensive thing in the universe and equip a massive fleet. All for a low price tag of 2.1B.

The numbers:
Factories = 433
Price = 2,153,408,848
Extra Ore Required = 26,867
Yield = 37,639,958 Cr/hour
Volume (Cargo space needed) = 9,210,497
Mammoth trips = ~162 if each run was optimized but that would take longer than just grabbing everything in order. Every Mammoth in the fleet will be put to work on that. Well except one to mind the nividum operation that pays for the party.

Has anyone tried something this big? Will it just get to laggy to finish because of the shear number of stations?

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